Improved mode op melting, casting-, and hardening nickel



UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

ISAAC ADAMS, JR., OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

IMPROVED MODE OF MELTING, CASTING, AND HARDENING- NICKEL.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 90,476, dated May 25, 1869.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, ISAAC ADAMS, Jr., of Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, have made an Improvement in Melting Nickel and Casting it in Molds and in Hardening it, of which the following is a specification:

It is well known that pure nickel is very hard and very difficult to melt, its meltingpoint being supposed to be above that of wrought-iron.

Nickel is often combined with copper or zinc either in the process of extracting the metal from its ores or by melting it in connection with those metals. Such nickel is more fusible than pure nickel; butitis also softer, and does not possess the qualities requisite for casting, as it is apt to be full of blow-holes and cavities, and does not take very sharp and well-defined impressions from molds. In combination with copper the color of nickel, when polished,is also less beautiful than when pure. In heating nickel to a high temperature, in connection with copper or zinc, those metals are first melted, and they then dissolve, or have a tendency to dissolve, the nickel, and thus combine with it and make it more fusible.

My invention consists in combining nickel with carbon or silica, or with both. I do this by heating it in a crucible in connection with those substances in a pulverized or liquid state. I prefer silica to carbon, and a mixture of both to either alone.

Carbon may be used in the form of common charcoal, either animal or vegetable, pulverized, or in the form of coal-tar. Sugar may also be used, or other substances which afi'ord carbon upon being burned or heated to a high temperature.

Silica may be used in the form of sand, silicate of lime, or soluble glass, either pulverized or in solution. I prefer silicate of lime.

The nickel in grains, or in small pieces or bars, (and the more free from copper and zinc or other foreign matters the better,) is embedded in the silica or carbon, and upon the application of a high heat takes them up to a considerable extent, and when it melts to the extent of four or five per cent. of its own weight, and perhaps even more, and becomes much more fusible than when pure, melting, when so combined, at a temperature somewhat above that at which steel melts. It

also acquires other qualities similar to those which carbon imparts to iron. It may be cast like cast-iron or steel in sand-molds, being free from cavities or blow-holes, and taking sharp and well defined impressions from the mold.

This property will enable nickel to be used with facility for many purposes in the arts to which it could not otherwise be applied practically. Nickel so combined with silica or carbon is much harder than pure nickel, being nearly as hard as tempered steel. It takes a high polish, and in color does not differ essentially from pure nickel polished. When combined with silica it can be remelted at pleasure without losing its silica and becoming infusible. 0n the contrary, when combined with carbon it loses the carbon to some extent when remelted, becoming less and less fusible as it does so, the carbon at a high temperature being burned out, and in such case the nickel must again be heated in contact with carbon.

I am aware that carbon is used to reduce nickel from its oxide, and that in such process the nickel takes up a portion of the carbon,

and is thus made more fusible than pure nickel; but in such cases it is also usually, as found in commerce, combined with copper, zinc, or other impurities, which counteract or mask the influence of the carbon. Copper and zinc, as before stated, increase the fusibility of nickel like carbon, but counteract the effect of carbon in imparting hardness and fitting it to be used for castings.

I am not aware that it has been known that nickel would, when heated in connection with carbon, take up that substance in the manner I have described; or that by so doing it acquired greater hardness and the qualities which fit it for being used in casting.

I claim, therefore- The combining of nickel with silica or carbon, or both, for the purpose of making it harder, increasing its fusibility, and giving it qualities which enable it to be used in casting.

The above specification of my said invention signed and witnessed at Boston this 1st day of May A. D. 1869.

Witnesses: ISAAC ADAMS, JR.

GHAUNcEY SMITH, W. W. SWAN. 

